The Department of Education announced that DeVos will “press pause” on the gainful employment regulations developed by the Obama administration. The rules require that career training programs, many of which are at for-profit colleges, graduate students whose loan payments don’t exceed 20% of their discretionary income or 8% of their total earnings. Rather than providing students with a degree in a broad field, these programs, which are typically less than four years, prepare students directly for work in a given occupation, such as health care support, cosmetology or mechanics. Programs that don’t meet those criteria for multiple years could lose access to federal financial aid.

Initially, career-training programs would be required to disclose the data associated with the requirement to students by July 1 of this year. On Friday, DeVos announced that she would give the schools until July 1, 2018 to comply with this requirement. In addition, the Department is extending the deadline for schools to file any appeals challenging the way the Department calculated their debt-to-earnings ratio.

“We need to get this right for our students, and we need to get this right for our institutions of higher education,” DeVos said in a statement announcing the delay. “Once fully implemented, the current rules would unfairly and arbitrarily limit students’ ability to pursue certain types of higher education and career training programs.”

The announcement marks the latest attempt by the Trump administration to challenge Obama-era regulations targeting for-profit colleges. Last month, officials announced they would revisit both the gainful employment rule and a regulation known as defense to repayment that allows borrowers who believe they’ve been defrauded by their schools to have their federal student loans wiped away.

This is also the second time Trump administration officials pushed back deadlines for schools to comply with the gainful employment requirements.

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